Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

Many coaches do a great job pointing out all the reasons why young athletes should play multiple sports. This includes everything from overuse injury prevention, burnout prevention, and simply letting kids be kids.  However, parents who want their kids to specialize in one sport for the sake of dominating the competition often ignore these historically proven points.

I tend to believe they choose to ignore the coaches who make these points because they have a shortcut mindset. Therefore, winning in the short run will always outweigh any long-term benefits for their kids. What’s more, a shortcut mindset is a difficult mindset to overcome when short term rewards constantly reinforce this mindset. As we all know, youth sports has more than enough short term rewards to chase. There is practically a national champion crowned in every sport every week starting with the 6 and under age group.

With that said, I have another argument for why young athletes should play multiple sports that will also appeal to parents with this shortcut mindset. This argument centers on the type of mental focus it takes to continuously improve at any level of sports.

Multi-Sport Athletes are The Best Athletes Because They are Flexible Thinkers

It’s a fact that each sport requires a different type of focus than another sport. As renowned sports psychologist Robert M. Nideffer, Ph.D. has shown, there are four primary types of focus in sports. Athletes focus their thinking in one of four ways:

1. Internally on themself, around a broad set of details
2. Internally on themself, around a few narrow details
3. Externally on their environment, around a broad set of details
4. Externally on their environment, around a few narrow details.

For example, in football quarterbacks use the external, broad focus style to analyze the defense and process a multitude of changing information to make decisions in real time. In baseball, hitters use the external, narrow focus style to focus on a few details around the pitcher and hitting the ball. While in Olympic style wrestling, the wrestler uses the internal, broad focus style to quickly analyze and process hundreds of micro decisions about their body movement and their opponent’s reactions to their movement.

Good athletes adopt their focus style to the sport they play. These athletes are great at focusing on what their sport demands 80% of the time. However, in the 20% of the time when the rare event happens, these athletes can’t adjust which causes their performance to decline.

The best athletes are flexible thinkers who use situational awareness to shift between multiple focus styles effectively. They are great with the 80% and are still good when the rare 20% happens. For example, a quarterback who is a good pocket passer and a good scrambler. Or a good homerun hitter who is also good at stealing bases.

The best way to develop this flexible thinking skill is to play multiple sports while young as each sport will help the athlete develop an alternative thinking style. A thinking style one coach neglects in the primary sport will become strong through playing another sport. This benefits young athletes in both the short run and the long run. As the young athlete will develop thinking skills that separate them from the competition.